Hello there:
Do you guys have any ideas about the origin of the phrase"one-night stand"? I check it in quite a few dictionaries. Merrian Webster gives me some insight: stand n[c]: an act of stopping or staying in one place.
But why not use one-night "stay"(or "stop") instead? Who made this phrase and what made it so "popular"?

Dear Rickiiiiiie, ONE-NIGHT STAND is defined as follows: 1) theatrical: a) a single performance by a touring theatrical company, each of the stops made on a tour of performances. b) a small rural town which would only support a single performance, the place at which the stops are made. c) the performance itself. 2) sexual: a) a sexual relationship lasting only one night. b) a person with which one has such a relationship.

The ONE-NIGHT STAND, meaning a single performance or encounter, comes from the days of touring theater companies, who would perform for just one night in a town because that town was likely to provide only enough audience for a single night. By the mid-twentieth century it had been transferred not only to other one-time performances of various kinds but also, in colloquial usage, to a single sexual encounter that was unlikely to be repeated by the same couple and which therefore implied some promiscuity.

The word STAND had been used since the 16th century to mean the action or an act of standing or coming to a position of rest; stop, a pause, halt – often said as ‘make a stand.’. And in the 19th and 20th centuries it became a word for a stop on a theatrical tour, either alone or in the phrase ‘one-night stand.’ And it wasn’t until 1937 that the ONE-NIGHT STAND made its appearance in print as a sexual encounter.

Theatrical usage:

<1596 “This is the pent-house under which Lorenzo desired us to make a STAND.”—Merchant of Venice, II, vi>

rickiiiie wrote:Hello there:
Do you guys have any ideas about the origin of the phrase "one-night stand"? I check it in quite a few dictionaries. Merrian Webster gives me some insight: stand n[c]: an act of stopping or staying in one place.
But why not use one-night "stay"(or "stop") instead? Who made this phrase and what made it so "popular"?

One0night stand should (not sure) to have origins in something like perforing "just here and just now", to try to explain better: when famous musical bend comes to some smaller city or village, and they never been there and will never come here they will advertise that evning like "one night stand with The Rolling Stones", Rolling Stones are just example of course :) Hope this is helpful...

Hello there:
Do you guys have any ideas about the origin of the phrase"one-night stand"? I check it in quite a few dictionaries. Merrian Webster gives me some insight: stand n[c]: an act of stopping or staying in one place.
But why not use one-night "stay"(or "stop") instead? Who made this phrase and what made it so "popular"?